Why Dabo Swinney wants to change spring game routine

CLEMSON — Colorado coach Deion Sanders wants to make robust changes to spring football games, switching the intrasquad scrimmage to days of joint practices with another program that leads into an exhibition game.

Not only did Syracuse coach Fran Brown support this idea, but Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney agreed, having championed the idea for more than a decade.

“‘Y’all can probably rewind every spring practice for the past 12 years, and I think I’ve said that for years and years and years,” Swinney said Wednesday after Clemson’s second spring scrimmage. “It’s never made any sense to me from pee wee league to middle school to high school, we are the only level of football, to the NFL, and we don’t get to practice against anybody. We can’t scrimmage anybody. I’ve never understood that.”

Swinney added football is the “only sport in college” that can’t practice with other teams, mentioning how baseball, soccer and basketball can schedule scrimmages with other programs.

Spring game changes arose this offseason as prominent Power Four programs, including Nebraska, Texas, Ohio State and Southern California, have canceled or altered theirs, citing the issue of tampering.

Clemson will host its spring game on April 5 (1 p.m. ET) at Memorial Stadium. Still, Swinney would change the annual exhibition if his team had joint practices or preseason games like the NFL, as opposed to its first game being against LSU on Aug. 30.

He sees many advantages with these changes, saying it would allow his players to get a fresh taste of new opponents in different situational work instead of only facing their teammates.

From a coaching perspective, Swinney said it would allow him and his staff to evaluate 11 players at a time instead of all 22. It also would spice up the current monotonous spring game format, where projected starters…

Source link : https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/sports/college/clemson/2025/03/27/clemson-football-dabo-swinney-deion-sanders-spring-preseason-games/82419082007/

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Publish date : 2025-03-27 09:05:00

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